Just got an email about this discussion called Lofty Pursuits on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8 pm at the Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue at 2nd Street): Sounds interesting. Here are the details:

Twenty-five years ago, Sharon Zukin published Loft Living: Culture 
and Capital in Urban Change, her landmark work on the transformation 
of SoHo from manufacturing space to cultural locus to residential 
lofts.

Shortly thereafter, the Two Trees corporation began their own project of transformation, changing Brooklyn’s waterfront into the residential neighborhood known today as DUMBO.

In conjunction with the Artists Space exhibition On Being: An Exhibition, CUP is pleased to present Lofty Pursuits, a live talk show featuring sociologist Sharon Zukin and Jed Walentas, vice-president of Two Trees.

Zukin and Walentas will discuss culture, capital, and real estate from SoHo to 
DUMBO. This special edition of People and Buildings will be filmed as a live talk show.

Don’t miss the chance to be part of the tudio audience.

Sharon Zukin teaches sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at Brooklyn College. Zukin’s previous books include The Cultures of Cities, and Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disneyland, which won the C. Wright M. Mills Award.

Jed Walentas started his real estate career with the Trump Organization in 1996. Jed left for Two Trees after the Giuliani administration agreed to rezone the DUMBO 
neighborhood.

In the ten years since its arrival, Two Trees has done $2 billion in work, building 759 luxury condominiums, 500 rental apartments, and transforming millions of square feet of industrial buildings into office space.

LOFTY PURSUITS
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8 pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
F/V to 2nd Ave
New York, NY

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

On Saturday afternoon, Smartmom was in a quandary: the Oh So Feisty One had a temperature of 100.7, her head was pounding, and she said that it hurt to swallow.

There were other telltale signs that the OSFO was sick: Her eyes were glassy, she was uncharacteristically droopy, and she just wanted to sleeeeeeeeeeeep (yes, with that many e’s!).

Smartmom knew that OSFO was down for the count. But Smartmom had longstanding plans on Sunday to attend “Later the Same Evening,” an opera based on the paintings of Edward Hopper, composed by her friend John Musto at the University of Maryland more than four hours away.

That meant that she’d have to leave the house on Sunday at 9 am and wouldn’t be home before 11 pm.

Smartmom was stressing. She knew that OSFO would want her to stay home. She’d already made that perfectly clear: “You’d go to an opera rather than stay with me?”

But Hepcat was urging her to go. “We’ll be fine,” he said, and Smartmom knew it was true.

He’d be home all day Sunday. So would Teen Spirit. Even Beautiful Smile, their babysitter of 16 years, had called to say that she wanted to sit with OSFO, too.

Still, Smartmom was stressing. On first glance, it was a no-brainer. Of course a mother should stay home with her sick child. That’s part of the job description.

Smartmom has luminous childhood memories of being sick and lying on the low couch in the living room of her family’s Riverside Drive apartment watching “Father Knows Best,” “I Love Lucy,” and “Leave it to Beaver” (re-runs! Please, she’s not that old).

Her mother, Manhattan Granny, would bring Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast on a tray, fluff her pillows, and pay extra special attention to Smartmom (because her twin, Diaper Diva, was at school).

When Teen Spirit and OSFO are sick, Smartmom tries to emulate her mom. She even has a special tray that she uses to serve Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast.

Now you can understand why Smartmom couldn’t make up her mind about the opera. Her friend had already bought the $200 round-trip train tickets and a day of gab and gossip on a train with her best high school gal friends would be a gas (despite the expense of the Amtrak fare. Smartmom admits that she blanched at the cost. Why is train travel so expensive in this country? Do they want us all to drive?)

The delightful train ride and opera was countered by a different image: OSFO lying in her bed with four fluffed pillows, a tray of chicken noodle soup, but no mommy.

So for a few moments, Smartmom was back to staying in Park Slope, keeping an eye on her sick little OSFO, who seemed to take an inordinate pleasure in ringing a blue bell to summon her mother and calling “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Ring. Ring. Ring. That ringing was getting on Smartmom nerves. If that OSFO has the energy to ring that thing so vigorously, she doesn’t need Smartmom to stay home from the opera. And if her throat hurts so much, why is she SCREAMING?

Besides, Smartmom loves Musto’s music and is a huge fan of Edward Hopper.
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

Smartmom didn’t know what to do and decided to take a wait-and-see approach. When OSFO popped out of bed, on Sunday morning, Smartmom decided that she was well enough for Smartmom to go. Then she took her temperature, which was still hovering around 100.

“Just go,” Hepcat counseled and Smartmom did.

When Smartmom and her friends met up at Penn Station, they found out that there was a power outage on the lines between New York and New Jersey. Every arrival and departure was delayed by more than an hour and no one seemed to know when the lines would be fixed.

Smartmom knew the decision had been made for her. Even when her friends decided to get a car and drive down to Maryland, Smartmom knew she wouldn’t be going.

By 11:15 am, Smartmom was back in the apartment on Third Street. She ran into OSFO’s room, “I’m here,” she cried feeling very heroic and maternal.

OSFO couldn’t hear her. She was wearing headphones and watching something on YouTube. When she finally looked up she seemed mildly pleased that Smartmom had returned and then went back to her YouTube video.

No matter. Smartmom was home. Exactly where she wanted to be.

“Hey, you want some cinnamon toast?”

I don’t know about you, but I am loving Clever Doc’s posts. Clever Doc is my friend and family member, Linda Hawes Clever. She is one smart lady with an MD and a specialty in occupational health. She started an organization called Renew, which you just might want to check out. Here is the ninth question she is posing to readers of OTBKB. If you  missed the others here they are.

Do You Laugh Enough?
Are You Still Learning?
How Angry Are You?
Do You Feel Trapped?
Do You Talk to People?
Are You Eating Right?
Are You Taking Risks?
Are You Refreshing Your Body and Spirit

Here is a question that gets surprising, even hilarious answers: What can you control? One woman backed down when she suggested, “Your children” and received a chorus of hoots. She revised her comment to, “Alright, alright, you can control where you place a two-month old.”

As much as we would like to, we can’t control the weather, our boss (or just about anybody else), traffic, or prices. We can certainly influence them and we should try to do so, but that’s not the same as control.

Realistically, we can control only ourselves. On a good day. If we’re healthy, well-slept, well-informed, well-nourished, and well-mentally, we can control our behavior, our attitude*, and our aspirations. ( Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”)

Not every day is a good day, of course. A string of bad days may call for learning something new or may call for medical, spiritual, or financial help. But on a good day, and with allies and information, we can be in charge of our own bodies, spirits and attitudes. (How did you do on question: Are You Refreshing Your Body and Spirit?).

We are also in charge of our hopes and dreams. That is, our aspirations. Knowing them keeps us pointed forward.

9.  How often do consider your own aspirations when you make decisions?
Huh? (0 points)
Rarely (1 points)
Sometimes (2 points)
Frequently (3 points)
Always (4 points)

Here’s our pal Pete’s take on an article on the Timesonline website ("An Odd Turn of Affairs"), which asks, Is Infidelity Good for a Marriage?" The article suggests that some marriages benefit from the shake-up caused by an affair:

So, here’s my weigh-in on the subject. Get rid of dogmatic words like "commitment" and "fidelity," first of all, so you can honestly look at your situation.

Like most things I write about regarding relationships, intention is everything. People in a marriage can be "committed" and "faithful" for reasons that clearly crush the passion in a relationship – i.e. – fear of being alone, fear of losing financial stability, insecurity about one’s physical appearance and attractiveness, etc. These are love-Eros-sex killers.

However, on the other side, again, let’s can the dogma. Very often, adults claiming to have "open marriages," arrangements in which extramarital sex is allowed under certain conditions (like "don’t ask/don’t tell" policies), more often than not have intimacy issues and similar insecurities, and as a result, their relationships are neither open nor a marriage. (If you and your partner are so open about sex, why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?)

So, what is to be gleaned from the statistical "turn of affairs" in Mr. Marshall’s article?

Simply this – If you love someone, set them free. Let go of your vice grip on your partner. Stop clinging, get a life, actualize yourself, be interesting and attractive to yourself. What I call "spontaneous monogamy" – monogamy that develops when two people are so in love that they want to experience their sexuality like a laser, through that one person only – is the greatest, deepest, most intense experience one can have as a human adult.

But forced monogamy, which most married couples contract for, is not rooted in love or lust, and basically consists of one partner saying to another: "Even if you no longer are in love with me one day, you still have to stay with me." Mmmm… how attractive is that?

Having an affair as a solution? Hardly.

While it can wake a couple up to the stagnation in their marriage, and therefore can have productive results, why wait until it gets to such a messy point? Shake your marriage up now. Go for couples counseling, that  really challenges your emotional laziness.

Stop taking all of your medications to go to sleep and get it up.

Stop leaning on your kids for meaning in life.

Stop obsessing about money.

And see the new movie coming, The Bucket List, a new film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and ask yourself how you would want to live if you knew you only had a little time left. You never know – you might rediscover the Eros in your marriage.

Peter Loffredo (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/)

Got this quick note from Josh Millstein at the Community Bookstore, organizer of many of their incredibly interesting sounding book clubs. Don’t let the names scare you, you don’t need an MA or be a member of the MLA to understand what’s going on. These groups are for EVERYONE.

This is just a quick reminder that the MODERNIST LITERATURE BOOK CLUB will be meeting next Wednesday, Nov. 28th, at 7:30pm. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, now’s your chance! Stop in and pick up a copy from the store today, just in time to read it over the holiday.

We love new faces, so don’t be afraid to come out! Hope all is well.

Thanks for your time,
Josh Milstein
Community Bookstore

Got an email this morning from Erin McHugh, author of The Portable Queer. There’s a reading on November 27th

I was pointed your way — or towards Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn — by Samantha, the events person at the Barnes & Noble on Park Slope. I’m reading there on Tuesday night, November 27, at 7:30 p.m. and when I told her I had few friends in the neighborhood, her first words were, “Get on the blog, babe!”

So let me tell you just a bit about my books, THE PORTABLE QUEER, and perhaps you’ll toss in a mention of my B&N reading — I would be most grateful. In fact, they’ll be appearing in th Holiday Gift Guide in TimeOutNewYork this week, so they’re getting some great attention.

THE PORTABLE QUEER is a trio of smart gay gift books: one is a book of quotes, one vignettes of gay history, and the third full of biographical sketches. They’re $12.95 each, and you can take a look at them on Amazon (they recently reached #1 in the category’s hot new releases) or bn.com in all their glory. I was featured on Larry Flick’s show on Sirius Radio the other morning, too, for those of our friends who were driving around looking for a parking space!

EDGEnewyork.com, a terrific gay site, called them “A great choice for the upcoming holiday season” in a fabulous review last week:

Somewhat postcard sized with brightly colored covers sporting what could easily become the new queer crest (think Hogwarts!), The Portable Queer is a collection of very concise coffee table (or pocket, or Christmas stockings) books that contains a clever and didactic compilation of data that you should already know but of course don’t because you have been too busy “reading” PerezHilton.com.

The series, put together by Erin McHugh, balances a great deal of information both from the annals of history and from the more mundane stocks of pop culture, you know, all the stuff we gays are made of. Many of the phrases or characters presented here you have probably already run across at some point of your varying-degree of rainbow colored life, but it is great to have our own version of Cliff notes in such a fun, bite-size way.

McHugh creates the perfect middle ground for both the bookworm and the tabloid fan, with all the variations of queer readers in between, but the biggest merit of The Portable Queer is how useful it can be to introduce friends and foes, fag hags and gay bashers to queer culture.

I love getting these BREAKING NEWS emails from the Brooklyn Paper. It’s very cool. Yesterday they dug into the story of the Coney Island information meeting that was cancelled. Here’s an excerpt from Adam F. Hutton’s piece, which focuses on Senator Carl Kruger of Bensonhurt. Read more, of course, at the BP.

A state senator who opposes Mayor Bloomberg’s Coney Island redevelopment plan claimed victory at the first public hearing on the proposal Monday night, boasting that he was able to shut down the meeting by bussing in hundreds of people to the event.

“Score one for the good guys,” state Sen. Carl Kruger (D–Bensonhurst) shouted to his supporters after the Coney Island Development Corporation hastily canceled the meeting. “We won the ground war. You made a point tonight, and that is that Bloomberg isn’t going to push his Manhattan plans on Brooklyn without hearing from Brighton Beach, Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay.”

More than 150 people had RSVP’d to attend the scheduled meeting at Coney Island Hospital, where officials from the City Hall-run CIDC planned to show off Bloomberg’s proposal to residents for the first time.

But Kruger was ready. Days before the meeting, he said Bloomberg’s vision was similar to “many failed plans” to revitalize Coney Island considered over the last 50 years and predicted it was “headed for the file cabinet.”

He also raised the central question many are wondering about the mayor’s proposal: How much will it cost to buy out developer Joe Sitt, whose Thor Equities has spent somewhere between $100 and $200 million to buy land in Coney’s amusement zone — land that the mayor now wants to buy, rezone as parkland, and have an outside theme park operator develop as an all-year attraction.